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CRYPTO: How the heck do I buy Ripple?

It appears the seal has been broken on the crypto currencies market. For the outsider, “crypto currency” is a term that sounds similar to a villain in a Batman movie. To the insider, it is the future of value exchange. Bitcoin (BTC) has become a household name lately with its meteoric rise from $1000 a coin to nearly $20,000 a coin in a year. Now enters Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), and now Ripple (XRP). But how do you buy Ripple?

The most popular crypto currency market place is Coinbase. Known for its mobile app, almost all of the average crypto participants use or at one point used Coinbase to make purchases of BTC, LTC, and or ETH. If you have ever purchased a cryptocurrency, most likely you have used Coinbase or know of it. Now that the seal has been broken by the mainstream, many people are beginning to look to other rising stars in the crypto world. Ripple (XRP) recently shot up from obscurity and has been covered by CNBC, Forbes, and Fortune.

I would say that I am fairly new participant to the crypto currency market but have heard about XRP from fellow dabblers in crypto currency. Like many participants, I purchased BTC, ETH, and LTC on Coinbase but I wanted to venture out a bit and try other currencies. I found out quickly that it wasn’t that easy. There was a myriad of security measures in place for transferring funds or even purchasing other currencies directly with dollars. The security was a pain in the “you know what” but I did sense that these exchanges have their ducks in a row trying to prevent fraudulent activity. I also realized that having to purchase other currencies with Bitcoin or Litecoin or Ethereum galvanized the real purpose of the crypto currency which was to embrace alternative money.

So how did I buy Ripple?

I decided to use Bittrex which is another well-known exchange to purchase Ripple. I have read some criticism of Bittrex as I have heard criticism about every other platform out there so I recommend you do your research when deciding which exchange to use. For this tutorial we will use Bittrex.

Well I quickly found out that you can’t just use a credit card or draft dollars from my bank account into Bittrex. You actually have to transfer money from another exchange in the form of another crypto currency. Since I had a Coinbase account and owned some bitcoin, I chose to use BTC due to the price at the time I wanted to buy Ripple.

This tutorial assumes you have accounts with both Bittrex and Coinbase.

Be sure you own one of the three cryptos that Coinbase sells. Fees matter so be sure to research what fees you are going to pay on Coinbase purchasing your coins and on Bittrex when you make a transaction. For this example we will be transfering Bitcoin. If you purchase BTC, I recomend using a credit/debit card for your purchase. It is much faster than a 7 day bank withdrawl.

Go into your Bittrex account and click “Wallets” in the menu. Search for “Bitcoin” in the “Account Balances” section on the top of the website.

Click the plus sign next to “Bitcoin” and copy the address from the input form field.

Go your “accounts” on Coinbase and find the currency that you own. You sill see a “send” button next to Bitcoin. Paste the address into the Send BTC window.

Type in the amount of Bitcoin (BTC) or Dollars (USD) you want to transfer from Coinbase to Bittrex.

Hit continue and follow through with the prompts.

Keep and eye on the “Pending Deposits” section on Bittrex. It takes my transfers about 15 to 20 minutes.

Once the deposit is in, you can now go to the “Bitcoin Markets” link in the menu and search for Ripple (XRP). This is where you can purchase XRP.

Keep in mind that purchasing crypto currencies carries considerable risks. When people ask me about whether they should purchase them, I simply tell them to not risk what they would lose sleep over if they lost all of it.

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